You can learn more about how to deal with negative social media comments here > 5 Tips to Dealing with Negative Facebook Comments. When staring down the barrel of a negative comment, brands have to choose whether to embrace or delete. Shortly after the picture was posted, several proponents of humane/sustainable farming began to thoughtfully comment on the apparent factory-farmed conditions being depicted. That is until Fair Oaks Farms chose to start deleting comments from the sustainable camp while liking and praising the comments that favored the farm. MORE >>

Should people be allowed to leave anonymous comments in online communities and forums? The issue of anonymity when commenting in online communities is actually more complicated than some arguments would suggest. When talking about anonymous comments we need to consider two types of anonymity: If the commenter should be anonymous to other members of the community. If the commenter should be anonymous to the site owner and community manager. Should anonymous comments be allowed in an online community? Image by loungerie via Flickr. MORE >>

Confession: I’m an awkward commenter, and struggle with how to best deliver response without becoming overbearing. So I always perk my ears up when I run into a comment marketer who is well liked by their peers, and glean any best practices I can. She is known in her community as someone who delivers extremely rich and deep comments, and she also writes a damn good blog on social. meant this in a respectful way to others who have different methods of commenting. On that note, here are Mila’s thoughts on commenting! GL: What about short comments? MORE >>

One of the ways that I promote my most important blog posts, like my massive post on 40+ Tips on How to Become a Social Media Rockstar , is through commenting on blogs enabled with CommentLuv. But what about forums? Sure, you might be thinking CommentLuv only works on WordPress, so how can there be CommentLuv enabled forums? But vBulletin-powered forums have the option for a third-party add-on that allows members to place an RSS feed in their forum profile. Then, when they post in the forum, their latest blog post comes up with their forum post. MORE >>

Most bloggers are appreciative of their readership, but many rarely consider that their existing audience can do more than promote content and keep the comments active. For successful bloggers, it’s quite probable that your readers have more to say than they post in the comments. Consider the potential of integrating forums into your website. Working with an online community development expert, Heather integrated a Q&A forum into her website. How forums add value. Forums, on the other hand, create a channel for direct interaction between readers. MORE >>